of horses, the
letting of houses, or the letting of land, is that Government should
not interfere; or, to speak more correctly, Government interference
should only interfere to prevent restrictive covenants and to ensure
Free Trade, so that every article (land included) may pass without
restraint into the hands of the man to whom it is worth most. The
greater the individual profit the greater the national profit. Under
a section headed "Law," below, I will say something about the removal
of entail, etc.--a dry but important branch of the question. The
National Property Rate, with the aid of sycophants, would remove many
obstructions.

There has been much controversy and several Parliamentary Acts
concerning the regulation of bargains between landlord and tenant.
How a tenant or a landlord can be injured in such a bargain is
impossible to understand, except in so far as a man is injured who
gives Ј30 for a horse worth only Ј20. Will Parliament interfere to
protect such horse-purchasers? The matter has been obscured by
omitting to notice that a tenant with a long lease at a fixed rent
possesses a share (often the larger share) of the "landlord
interest," in the language of political economy. As a simple example:
A tenant took, say in 1850, a Scotch farm on a Scotch lease absolute
of nineteen years, at Ј500 a year. Within two or three years of his
so taking it the rise in wool, potatoes, and other things, caused the
value of the farm to rise to Ј600 a year, and this increased value
lasted the whole of his lease and some time after. Now, treating the
increase of value of Ј100 a year as permanent (as it was very soon
regarded both by landlord and tenant), it is clear that this Ј100 a
year for the period of the lease (say seventeen years to run) went to
the tenant, not to the landlord; and the first seventeen years of an
annuity in fee is worth more than all the rest.

It is evident that on a seven years' (absolute) lease the tenant
would similarly get a good share (not the larger share) in all the
improvement in value that occurred during his lease. Up to ten or
twelve years ago the value of land had been rising very steadily in
the South of England for near half a century. Rents were pushed up
very generally at the termination of every lease, though noblemen,
great county gentlemen, the Church, and the Universities, as a rule,
never raised the rent on an old tenant; but they could raise the rent
all the more by a jump when a new man came in. During all these years
the tenant-farmers complained rarely of their leases, though they
were often subject to covenant nuisances about cropping, selling off
the farm, game, and incoming for the new tenant.

But during the last ten years the process is reversed. A farmer took
a farm for Ј500 a year for seven years in the south of England, and
before the lease had run half out the farm was not worth Ј400 (and in
many cases not Ј300). Here the tenant suffered a heavy loss. When in
former years he got a gain he never proposed to allow his landlord 15
per cent extra rent. But now that the drop in value of such farms has
taken place, and probably will not proceed further, a tenant who
takes a new lease requires no Act of Parliament to protect him: he
can protect himself. By the date the Abolition of the Game Laws (a
wrong but intelligible phrase) was carried, the farmers in the South
of England were in a position not to take any benefit under that Act,
but to covenant for all the game and sporting on their farms for
themselves. So as to the Act regulating the leases between tenant and
landlord, where they chose to avail themselves of it, the tenant now
can generally get more favourable terms outside the provisions of the
Act. Farms are so down, tenants so scarce, that landlords have to
give way on all minor points. Wherever Government interference
operates at all, it is almost sure to operate harmfully. Consider for
a moment the case of